Since tomorrow is a travel day and you likely won’t get a lot of content from me **nudge**Jason/URR/Roamy**nudge**, here’s a couple of bits.

Naval strategy, power projection, hardcore show of force, however you want to describe it. Back in the early 1980s, the Navy, with the newfound guidance of the Maritime Strategy, went out of its way to show the Soviet Union that our Navy could hold them at risk.

Do we still have this strategic level thinking and operation capability after 10 years of supporting the War on Terror? I hope so. The strategic pivot to the Pacific will certainly have the brighter minds of the operating forces trying to attain that capability.

Relative to the first piece up there, Exercise Able Archer scared the crap out of the Soviets. They thought the balloon was going to go up. I think it is fair to say that without that near panic, future efforts between Reagan and Gorbachev to reduce tensions would not have come to pass. And without that, we might not have seen the fall of the Soviet Union. Or at any rate, such a collapse may have had a distinctly different flavor.

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Did I share this picture of Sox before? I dunno. But I like it. So you get it again.

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